The CEU Philosophy Department cordially invites you to a talk (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series)
by
Philip Gerrans (University of Adelaide)
on
Seeing Doubles and Singular Thoughts:
Experience and Explanation in Delusions of Misidentification
Tuesday, 7 Oct 2008, 5.30 PM, Zrinyi 14, Room 412
ABSTRACT
Our ability to track objects as they undergo change suggests very strongly that we both perceive, and conceive of, objects as things distinct from their properties, as enduring individual substances. This notion that objects are individual substances, rather than simply co-instantiated collections of properties we can call the intrinsic concept of objects. An alternative view, that objects are collections of properties we can call the relational conception of objects. On the relational view when (essential?) properties change, so do objects. I apply some lessons from debates about the nature of objects and our perception of them in order to understand the nature of the experience involved in delusions of misidentification. These delusions report the experience of seeing someone who is perceptually indistinguishable from a familiar person but is not the familiar person. On the relational conception of objects this would be impossible. Yet the standard way of explaining these delusions within cognitive neuropsychiatry assumes the relational conception. Not only that but the standard view also assumes that experience of seeing a particular relational object (in this case a person) is partly constituted by affective experience. This combination of assumptions leads to problems whose resolution is the aim of the final section of this paper
Kriszta Biber
Department Coordinator
Philosophy Department
Tel: 36-1-327-3806
Fax: 36-1-327-3072
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